Brain Fade - You've seen one VC10 make the turn. I've seen twenty miss it.
Guess what? You can't really change from 6nm gaps with no wind to 5.5nm with a 5kt headwind, 5nm with a 10kt headwind, etc etc. If it's a howling westerly, sure the tower controller can tell the approach radar guy/guyess to pack at 4nm and still get deps away. There are probably a couple of people here who'd tell you that I seldom decided against using a 4nm gap to get a departure away IF it was safe to do so. Such a pity that we've all been burned by issuing "landing traffic 3 miles, cleared for take-off", only to hear "roger, we're just waiting for our figures" or "cabin not ready" or "we need 30 seconds on the runway to get the engines up to temp".
And no, we can't "strike a balance twixt safety and expedition." Our job is to provide a safe, orderly and expeditious flow of air traffic IN THAT ORDER.
No ATC provider will change procedures on the basis of one pilot's views, which is just as well. A locally based bizjet pilot complained about being sequenced 6 miles behind preceeding medium traffic (hmm, light behind a medium, let's see, 6nm for wake vortex, THAT'S A MANDATORY REQUIREMENT IN THE UK, DOOFUS). In fact, here's a thought, maybe you are that pilot. If so, no one takes you seriously.
As for visuals, they work fine when you're number one or number last. If you're in the middle of sequence, forget it unless you've already been vectored to a point at which you can't screw up the sequence.
Noise abatement procedures are only applied by ATC, not set by us. The 5 mile final requirement came in after a 767 on a visual joined at 1nm final. Yes, there were noise complaints. I was standing on the beach at Cramond at the time he made that approach and it was, as we Scots say, well dodgy.
Runway allocations at Edinburgh are often scuppered by overflow parking and work in progress shutting 12/30 and there's another reason why it often won't work. If there are departures on the way out to the hold for 24 (this at least was the case before the full-length taxiway), they sit on the overshoot to 30.
If you have all the facts, by all means complain. Or perhaps you could take a look at the movement figures. A capacity expert spent a few days at Edinburgh a couple of years ago and worked out that the MAX movement rate was 24 per hour. I know that my watch regularly moved 35 or so an hour. From a runway with no high-speed exits, that's going some, especially as the mix of departures often means more than 2 minutes is required between departures. And no, Edinburgh ATC does not set the time requirement between deps. That's worked out by Scottish Control for their benefit, with a small amount of input from EDI and GLA.
One wonders what reaction there would be if ATCOs singled out a particular airline for a bashing on PPRUNE....
And another thing.... 1261, check your PMs!
